Garden at City Hall

Project Description Some fellow New West residents and I have begun an initiative to build a new community garden on the lawn at City Hall. We have official approval from the Mayor’s Task Force and are ready to move forward in building our Garden at City Hall. There will be 12 garden plots, the first choice of which will go to local non-profit societies, like the Purpose Society and our local food bank, to name a few. With help in design from Parks and Recreation, our Garden at City Hall will be a beautiful public space that connects multiple generations of our city’s residents over a love of urban agriculture. We’re being gifted a mason bee farm from the Honeybee Centre and are hoping to use it to make the garden an educational destination for the children in New West. We are planning to host heirloom seed exchanges, workshops for new gardeners, and many other public events. We believe that by creating a usable public space on the site of an empty lawn, we can engage New West residents and help them see the ways in which this wonderful city truly belongs to all of us.

Current Status The gardens are completed and members of the New West Community Garden Society have planted their plots. Stop by the New West Farmers Market Plot to pick some herbs for dinner!

Community Benefit Our garden will be an iconic space that connects New West residents, both old and young, around the love of growing plants and vegetables. Not only will it be a visible place for people of our community to watch the process of urban agriculture, it will also have a mason bee farm that will be used to educate New Westminster’s school-children about pollination and pollinating insects. Many of the twelve garden plots will be utilized by local charities for their own use, either for the therapeutic benefits of gardening or the fresh produce each plot will produce. Additionally, we hope to host many community events in our beautiful garden. Our first event will be a seed exchange party as soon as the garden is open that will be free to all residents of New Westminster, with many agriculture-based games and activities for children and adults in our community.

Project Cost The total cost of the Garden at City Hall is $40,000, we are asking for the One Prize so that we can fund most of the excavation at the garden site, which is projected to cost between $2,400-$3,800.